\section{Introduction}\label{sec:introdution}
\noindent
Until recently, manual testing was considered the main and traditional process to test industrial software during its Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Today, the need for companies to increase the Software Quality Assurance (SQA) and reduce the development time is making such a process more and more not appropriate to meet market demands.

Furthermore, companies that produce artefacts for safety-critical applications, notably automotive, aviation, medicine, nuclear engineering, transport, etc., have to face some additional issues. In particular, they have to deal with high costs to buy hardware units for developers and testers, and the impossibility to perform certain types of tests because of their dangerousness, destructiveness, and management of the execution time.

Nowadays, since the technology evolution is quickly widespread, one of the few factors that are playing important roles on the market to make the difference among countless products is the SQA. Companies are adapting their development processes with the purpose to find the right asset and balance among quality, costs, and time, in order to meet market demands. In particular, they are targeting rapid and flexible solutions, such as the Agile approach. Despite their efforts, companies are still encountering several limitations in speeding-up software releasing, often due to the (un-)availability of involved hardware.

By investigating on several companies, a common trend to face the issues mentioned so far is to replace the real system with a simulated one and replace manual testing with automated regression testing. This trend promises to save costs concerning the purchase of hardware, reduce the development time due to separate software and hardware developments, and to  enhance the SQA level.

This article discusses about the exploitation of automated regression testing in a simulated environment by illustrating a concrete industrial case study. The aim is to clarify the general needs, implementation solutions, advantages, and drawbacks of adopting such a testing methodology in industrial practice.

The paper is structured as follows: Sect.~\ref{sec:sota} describes the basic concepts that underpin the contribution of this work, while Sect.~\ref{sec:sop} details 